The color of today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe Mazda RX-7 is Havana Brown, and like the legend of Santa Claus, it's quite the survivor. Of course that doesn't necessarily mean it'll survive our judgment of its pricing.

Whoa, doggies, I did not see yesterday's custom twin turbo T-bird pulling in such a decisive 70% Nice Price win, but that's exactly what it did. What a nice Christmas present for the seller, but what I bet he'd really like to find under the tree this year is a wad of cash in place of the car in his driveway.

Speaking of Christmas, while the traditional color scheme of the season is red and green - or at least so say my elf-themed Underoos - this Yule Log-colored classic Mazda might also provide some holiday cheer. And of course if you are amongst the many who don't celebrate Christmas it's something to take your mind off all those awful holiday songs on the radio and in the stores.

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Mazda's RX-7 was a hail mary for the brand. The company had been the torchbearer of the rotary engine at a time when OPEC constraints on fuel supplies cast a glaring light on that engine's excessive thirst. Mazda quickly expanded their reciprocating engine offerings, and moved the rotary into a car where mileage might still be a secondary concern, a sports car.

The resulting RX-7 arrived in the U.S. in 1978 with a tiny 1.2-litre twin rotor that was good for 105-bhp @4,000 rpm and the same number of lb-ft in torque. Wrapped around that was bullet-like two-seater coupe body featuring a frameless glass hatch and everybody's favorite - pop-up headlamps.

While unequivocally a sports car, the performance of the SA (yo, esa!) RX-7 wasn't you might today call scintillating. Zero to sixty came in at tad under 10 seconds, or about what you'll get from one of those electric shopping carts the morbidly obese use at the Walmarts. These cars do handle pretty well however, owing to the fact that at under 2,500 pounds, there wasn't all that much to fling around.

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Of course everybody knows that it's almost always more fun to drive a slow car fast than to drive a fast car slow, and the RX-7, in its earliest guise, is an entertaining ride to be sure. This 1983 FB looks not only entertaining, but seems to have rolled out of a time warp as well.

Offered up in a glorious hue of poo, this little Mazda was apparently traded in at a Minnesota Subaru dealer. One has to wonder what the story is there. I mean it's sort of like popping out your mom's classic coin collection to get enough change for a 40 at the liquor store.

Regardless of how this orphan got to the dealer, they seem to have set their detailing elves to work on it and it now shines like an upskirt perv's patent leather shoes. The dealer claims the car has had only two owners over the course its life, and those jolly old souls only managed to put a little over 71,000 miles on the car's clock during their tenure.

That has resulted in a car that - at least in photos - looks damn-near new. The interior especially is a time capsule of '80s wonderfulness. The steering wheel and crack-free dash are both modestly proportioned owing to neither being tasked with carrying an airbag. The seats are glorious totems in vinyl and cloth, and look inviting if not quite ergonomically sound. And of course, the radio has two knobs just as God and Wolfman Jack intended.

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It's rare to find a survivor like this in the wild, and it's even more rare to find one for which the seller isn't asking a premium in light of its condition. You'll now need to decide if that's the case here, based on this RX-7's $3,998 asking price. What do you think about that, does it totally stuff your stocking? Or, does that price make you think this Mazda can drown in brown 'til New Years?